Tuesday, 15 September 2026

88% of the 20,202 passenger trains whose arrival was recorded on Tuesday, 15 September 2026 reached their destination within five minutes — an ordinary day, with the delays concentrated where they usually are.

Of 25,472 recorded runs, 503 did not run at all. Among those whose arrival reached the archive, 17,801 were within five minutes, 2,303 between five and thirty minutes down, and 98 more than half an hour — the tail that people actually remember.

“This service has been delayed by a speed restriction” was the most common explanation, given for 605 services.

Merseyrail came closest to running to time, 99.8% of its 405 recorded arrivals; c2c had the largest cancelled share at 10.8%.

An ordinary weekday timetable, with the two commuter peaks that give the network most of its work and least of its slack.

The day in numbers

Every percentage among the bands is of the 20,202 trains whose arrival reached the archive — not of all 25,472, and the bands are exclusive. 4,767 trains ran without an arrival time being recorded, and nothing is claimed about how punctual those were. Delay is judged at the destination, a stricter test than the industry's own measure and not comparable with it.

By operator

37 operators ran passenger services on this date, from ScotRail on 2,928 runs down to North Yorkshire Moors Railway on 8. Ordered by volume, not performance — any heading re-sorts it.

“On time” is of each operator's recorded arrivals; “incl. cancelled” counts a cancellation as a failure, which is what the industry's own measure does. Across the whole day they read 88% and 86% — why both are published, what each hides, and how the sort treats a small operator.

Why trains were late

8 different reasons were given for delay on this date, each reproduced in the operator's own words.

Why trains were cancelled

A reason reached the archive for 233 of the 503 cancellations (46.3%), across 8 distinct reasons. A run cancelled part-way along often carries no reason at all.

The longest delays

The worst of them arrived 3h 14m behind schedule — Airdrie to Balloch , booked away at 13:13, run by ScotRail. The ten longest range from 3h 14m down to 1h 04m, and they belong to 6 operators, Greater Anglia accounting for 3. What a delay on that scale usually means.

Through the day

Booked departures by hour, with the share that arrived within five minutes. Punctuality was weakest at 04:00, when 59% of 152 arrived within five minutes.

The filled part of each bar is the share of that hour's booked departures that arrived within five minutes. The quietest was 02:00 with 15.

What ran

Formations were recorded for 27,131 trains on this date, made up of 2,888 individual units and 12,703 separate vehicles. These figures cover the services an allocation was published for, not every train that ran.

25 different classes of train appeared, which is the signature of a full weekday — the long-distance fleets, the regional diesel units and the suburban electrics all working at once.

The most-used class was the 377, allocated to 3,339 of the day's recorded trains from a pool of 225 units.

The average train was 5.6 vehicles long. The longest formation recorded was 24 vehicles.

Of 25,472 runs, 27,131 had a formation published (107%) — these are allocations rather than observations.

Buses

17,266 buses from 189 operators were seen on this date, across 3,180,515 position reports.

134,026 bus journeys were followed to their destination on this date. 95,768 arrived on time, 7,425 late, and 30,833 — 23% — arrived ahead of schedule.

Early arrivals are normal rather than exceptional. Bus running times carry enough slack to survive traffic, and it is concentrated in the last leg, so a clear run simply finishes sooner than booked.

The average arrival was 0 minutes late, and 803 journeys finished more than twenty minutes down.

By operator

Of the operators with enough journeys to compare, Fastrack (operated by Go Ahead) ran closest to time (90%), and National Express furthest from it (33%).

Our figures, not the regulator's — why buses run early, the current league.

Recorded live from the Darwin and TRUST feeds on 15 Sept 2026 itself. How these figures are measured · Sources and licences